This coming Thursday, WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will give a keynote speech on health privacy and security, “The New Healthcare Fraud Continuum.” Based on her latest research in health privacy, this talk will be Dixon’s first talk about the new fraud continuum, what it is, how it operates, what it means to providers and patients,

Video of Congressional Testimony on data brokers. Pam Dixon gave this testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on December 18, 2013 at a hearing dedicated to shedding light on data broker industry practices and how that affects consumers. The full testimony contains numerous examples of data broker activities, consumer scoring, and discusses the solutions that are needed, including a requirement for data broker opt out.

Senior Identity Theft – FTC — WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be speaking at the Federal Trade Commission Tuesday on the issue of Senior ID theft, and specifically, about medical forms of the crime. Dixon, who wrote the first report on medical ID theft and coined the term for the crime, will be presenting new research at the panel.

Visiting Scholar: Privacy in a Modern Era — Pam Dixon is a visiting scholar at Portland’s PNCA. She is scheduled to speak with students in a round of interdisciplinary classes, and she will also be giving a public keynote at 7 pm in Swigert Commons. Her public lecture is on Modern Privacy.

Pam Dixon to Speak at Churchill Club — WPF’s Pam Dixon will speak on privacy gaps at Silicon Valley’s Churchill Club Wednesday, January 23 in San Francisco. The panel is part of International Privacy Day activities and will be moderated by Chris Kelley, Former Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook.

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.